Apologetics derives from the Greek ἀπολογία, meaning "apology" or "speaking in defense", which is an ancient Greek legal term that refers to the defendant's response in opposition to charges.

The term "apologetics" was first used in the Christian context by the Apostle Paul in several epistles to refer to his defense of the Gospels. It is in this regard that Christian apologetics developed as a group of related ideologically defensive theological, pseudophilosophical and pseudoscientific disciplines concerned with attempting to defend and/or advance Christian truth claims abusing reason and/or evidence. One who practices apologetics is called an apologist.[2]

Apology doesn't have to relate to religion, however. One can be an apologist of almost any crappy concept that needs the aid of special diversionary tactics to give it a chance to get out of bed, never mind to stand up (to scrutiny) — even a Stalin apologist.

While this article treats Christian apologetics specifically, the practice of apology actually exists in most religions — as a form of "intellectual asbestos" (i.e. fire retardant) against the withering flames of science and naturalism — including Hinduism,[3][4]Islam[5] and Judaism.[6][7]

Regardless of the specific area of concern of the apologist, there are two overarching approaches to the debate: negative and positive apologetics.

The names of these approach do not refer to their tone. Negative apologetics is aimed at negating or refuting a claim or criticism of an opponent while positive apologetics is aimed at offering positive justification for Christian belief. These defenses are most often based in evidentialist and presuppositionalistepistemologies.

There is a debate within the Christian apologetic community regarding the function and utility of the various apologetic methods. Some apologists like William Lane Craig, who never saw a Christian truth claim he didn't like, accept the ability of positive apologetics to adequately substantiate affirmative truth claims. Others believe the most apologetics can achieve is overcoming objections to Christian truth claims, rather than affirmatively proving the claims themselves.[8]

“”Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor. Philosophers stretch the meaning of words until they retain scarcely anything of their original sense. They give the name of "God" to some vague abstraction which they have created for themselves; having done so they can pose before all the world as deists, as believers in God, and they can even boast that they have recognized a higher, purer concept of God, notwithstanding that their God is now nothing more than an insubstantial shadow and no longer the mighty personality of religious doctrines.

Purely defensive apologetics, or negative apologetics, "is concerned with responding to direct attacks upon the truth or rationality of Christian faith, trying to show that such criticisms are unjustified. This apologetic method is commonly associated with Reformed Epistemology. The objective is to show that the believer is justified or is not in violation of any rationality norms or is within his or her 'epistemic rights' in accepting Christian beliefs."[10] Negative apologetics may attempt to refute arguments perceived as contrary to Christian faith by showing them to be internally inconsistent or by showing them to be irrational according to Christian presumptions.[11] As negative apologetics is framed in terms of permission to maintain a belief despite objections, it makes no attempt to justify the belief as warranted. Thus, where negative apologetics is the sole apologetics presented, as is common among young earth creationists, the apologist implicitly makes an argument for the existence of a god or some other religious proposition that remains unvalidated.

Christian apologetics can be further divided into a number of substantially overlapping ad hoc categories by their primary focus, whether it is arguing for the existence of god, special creation, or the compatibility of science and Christian faith.

The Cosmological argument or argument from First cause claims that everything that exists has a cause, and since the universe exists, it must have a cause which exists outside the universe itself - meaning the Christian God. The question of why God does not need a cause inevitably leads to special pleading, often by restating the argument in terms of things that begin to exist and defining their God to be eternal. These arguments are flawed because they conflate the appearance of matter in a certain form - which we know from experience to have a physical explanation - with the existence of matter itself, which we have no reason to believe is conditioned on any prior cause or dependent on any prior form. A variation called the Kalām cosmological argument is a favorite of notable apologist William Lane Craig.

The Ontological argument defines God as the single most perfect being that could ever be thought of, and then argues that existence is part of perfection, so that God must exist or the definition would contradict itself. It begs the question by assuming that man cannot imagine a being greater than one exists. The idea that the nature of the universe depends on the construction of human language is illogical and a non sequitur. Another problem with this argument is that one cannot define something into existence, as would be possible by creating a unicorn whose attributes include existence, the Realicorn. If anyone claims he does not exist, they are clearly not talking about him - thus, it follows that the Realicorn exist.

The Argument from morality attributes all moral rules and all intrinsic good to God. This is largely disproven by ethical systems that do not invoke the supernatural, like secular humanism and Confucianism. Ultimately, it is a false dilemma: morality must either be fixed by God and transcend human experience, or it is nothing more than a matter of preference. Another problem is that it has never been demonstrated that intrinsic goodness exists, so, as far as we know, goodness (and badness) are merely human constructions. Another notable issue that arises from the argument from morality is that it renders good and bad entirely dependent on God's caprice - or, to look at it another way, anything God tells you to do is acceptable even if it would be horrifying otherwise. William Lane Craig has expressly endorsed this position with regard to the slaughter of children on God's orders.

The Transcendental argument for God, probably the weakest of all, holds that logic, induction, and morality could only be justifiable in a world ruled by the Christian God. This argument gets used to shift the burden of proof by saying that anyone who uses logical reasoning has presupposed the existence of God. It is refuted easily enough by the observation that basic laws of logic are derived from properties of the universe, so all someone attempting to use logic is presupposing - or, more technically, taking as an axiom - is that the universe exists.

The Argument from beauty is that beauty is a metaphysical property that can only be attributed to a supernatural entity, such as God. The argument from love is similar, but replaces beauty with love. Both are non sequiturs, and try to claim that something has an intrinsic value - which has not been demonstrated - instead of it being just a human construction.

“”We consider that the theologian, who asserts the infallibility of the Bible, and the independency and sufficiency of its own laws and interpretation, is entitled to the preliminary presumption; and therefore the burden of proof rests upon the geologist, who asserts a hostile hypothesis. … The defender of the Bible need only stand on the defensive. That is, the geologist may not content himself with saying that his hypothesis (which is opposed to Bible teaching) is plausible, that it cannot be scientifically refuted, that it may adequately satisfy the requirements of all the physical phenomena to be accounted for. All this is naught, as a successful assault on us. We are not bound to retreat until he has constructed an absolutely exclusive demonstration of his hypothesis; until he has shown, by strict scientific proofs, not only that his hypothesismay be the true one, but that it alone can be the true one; that it is impossible that any other can exclude it. And we, in order to retain our position, are not at all bound to construct any physical argument to demonstrate geologically that Moses' statement of the case is the true one; for, if the Bible is true, what it teaches on this subject is proved by the biblical evidences, in the absence of all geologic proof.[15]

Thus, the YEC apologist engages dishonest question begging by merely asserting but not proving his conclusions while both hypocritically holding his opponent to the impossible task of proving a negative yet rejecting any conclusion contrary to "biblical evidences."